With his Sunday tweet
that Bashar Assad, “Animal Assad,” ordered a gas attack on Syrian civilians,
and Vladimir Putin was morally complicit in the atrocity, President Donald
Trump just painted himself and us into a corner.
“Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL
attack in Syria,” tweeted Trump, “President Putin, Russia and Iran are
responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price… to pay.”
“Big price… to pay,” said the president.
Now, either Trump launches an attack that could drag us deeper
into a seven-year civil war from which he promised to extricate us last week,
or Trump is mocked as being a man of bluster and bluff.
For Trump Sunday accused Barack Obama of being a weakling for
failing to strike Syria after an earlier chemical attack.
“If President Obama had crossed his stated Red Line In The
Sand,” Trump tweeted, “the Syrian disaster would have ended long ago! Animal
Assad would have been history!”
Trump’s credibility is now on the line and he is being goaded by
the war hawks to man up. Sunday, John McCain implied that Trump’s comments
about leaving Syria “very soon” actually “emboldened” Assad:
“President Trump last week signaled to the world that the United
States would prematurely withdraw from Syria. Bashar Assad and his Russian and
Iranian backers have heard him, and emboldened by American inaction, Assad has
reportedly launched another chemical attack against innocent men, women and
children, this time in Douma.”
Pronouncing Assad a “war criminal,” Lindsey Graham said Sunday
the entire Syrian air force should be destroyed.
So massive an attack would be an act of war against a nation
that has not attacked us and does not threaten us. Hence, Congress, prior to
such an attack, should pass a resolution authorizing a U.S. war on Syria.
And, as Congress does, it can debate our objectives in this new
war, and how many men, casualties and years will be required to defeat the
coalition of Syria, Russia, Hezbollah, Iran, and the allied Shiite militias
from the Near East.
On John Bolton’s first day as national security adviser, Trump
is being pushed to embrace a policy of Cold War confrontation with Russia and a
U.S. war with Syria. Yet candidate Trump campaigned against both.
The War Party that was repudiated in 2016 appears to be back in
the saddle. But before he makes good on that threat of a “big price… to pay,”
Trump should ask his advisers what comes after the attack on Syria.
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Lest we forget, there was a reason Obama did not strike Syria
for a previous gas attack. Americans rose up as one and said we do not want
another Middle East war.
When John Kerry went to Capitol Hill for authorization,
Congress, sensing the national mood, declined to support any such attack.
Trump’s strike, a year ago, with 59 cruise missiles, on the air
base that allegedly launched a sarin gas attack, was supported only because
Trump was new in office and the strike was not seen as the beginning of a longer
and deeper involvement in a war Americans did not want to fight.
Does Trump believe that his political base is more up for a
major U.S. war in Syria today than it was then?
The folks who cheered Trump a week ago when he said we were
getting out of Syria, will they cheer him if he announces that we are going
deeper in?
Before any U.S. attack, Trump should make sure there is more
hard evidence that Assad launched this poison gas attack than there is that
Russia launched that poison gas attack in Salisbury, England.
One month after that attack, which Prime Minister Theresa May
ascribed to Russia and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson laid at the feet of Putin
himself, questions have arisen:
If the nerve agent used, Novichok, was of a military variety so
deadly it could kill any who came near, why is no one dead from it?
Both the target, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia are
recovering.
If the deadly poison was, as reported, put on the doorknob of
Skripal’s home, how did he and Yulia manage to go to a restaurant after being
contaminated, with neither undergoing a seizure until later on a park bench?
If Russia did it, why are the British scientists at Porton Down
now admitting that they have not yet determined the source of the poison?
Why would Putin, with the prestige of hosting the World Cup in
June on the line, perpetrate an atrocity that might have killed hundreds and
caused nations not only to pull out of the games, but to break diplomatic
relations with Russia?
U.S. foreign policy elites claim Putin wanted Trump to win the
2016 election. But if Putin indeed wanted to deal with Trump, why abort all
such prospects with a poison gas murder of a has-been KGB agent in Britain,
America’s foremost ally?
The sole beneficiaries of the gas attacks in Salisbury and Syria
appear to be the War Party.